CRIM217 First Essay PDF

Preview

Summary

Essay on the criminal behaviour of Gary Ridgway with criminological theories to explain activity ...

Description

1 Katie Daly: 300442625 Word Count: 2104 Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer who was convicted on 49 charges of homicide, although he confessed to killing up to 80 victims (Tikkanen, 2016). This essay will begin by giving background to Ridgway’s life and crimes, before considering how Eric Hickey’s trauma control model theory can be used to explain Ridgway’s violent murder spree. This will include discussing three aspects of the trauma control model: the experience of childhood trauma; the development of feelings of rejection, humiliation and insecurity which ultimately encourage rage and aggressive behaviour; and the manifestation of violent sexual fantasies, which offenders ultimately attempt to enact onto their innocent victims. Finally, this essay will analyse any potential limitations to this model. Ridgway was born in 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to parents Mary and Thomas Ridgway (Tikkanen, 2016). His home life was reported to be dysfunctional and troubled, as he witnessed the argumentative and occasionally violent relationship of his parents (Riviera, 2003). The actions of his mother were specifically abusive, and experts involved in Ridgway’s case have commented their relationship was impacted by a wide pattern of inappropriate sexual conduct (Harden, 2003). In interviews with psychologists, Ridgway confessed to being sexually attracted to his mother as a teenager and fantasized about killing and stabbing her (Riviera, 2003). When he was 16, Ridgway stabbed a six-year old boy in the woods outside of his house (Harden, 2003). Ridgway is also dyslexic and has an IQ in the late eighties, resulting in him being held back a year in high school (Harden, 2003). After graduating, he served in the Navy for two years in Vietnam (Tikkanen, 2016). He admitted to regular utilising sex workers, one of whom he contracted gonhorrea from. His fixation with prostitutes continued when he returned to the US throughout all three of his marriages, and these sex workers formed the bulk of his victims. It is not known when Ridgway first began killing women, but it is believed that he murdered at least 80 women and girls throughout the 1980s and 1990s (McCarthy & Thornburgh, 2002). Most of those murders occurred between 1982 and 1984 (Harden, 2003). Ridgway focused on picking up teenage runaways or sex workers along the Pacific Highway South before strangling them to death in his home or truck and dumping their bodies in the Green River in Seattle, in wooded areas or ravines, or in other dump sites around the county (Harden, 2003; Tikkanen, 2016). Ridgway regularly had sex with his victims before killing them and admitted to occasionally returning to their bodies and practicing necrophilia (Harden, 2003). Ridgway was arrested in 1982 for charges relating to prostitution and became a suspect for the murders in 1983. He was ruled out as a suspect in 1984 after passing a polygraph test and again in 1987 (Tikkanen, 2016). However, the DNA samples collected from Ridgway in 1987 were ultimately what lead to his arrest in 2001 (Riviera, 2003). He was originally arrested for the murders of four women, but when the investigation revealed the extent of his prolific killing spree, he eventually plead guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder in 2003. Ridgway was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, which he is currently serving at Washington State Penitentiary (McNerthney, 2018). The development of Ridgway’s behaviour, from a childhood abuse victim, to a violent adolescent, to a rapist and murder in his adulthood can be explained through Hickey’s trauma control model. This model was created as an attempt to comprehensively consider the role that traumatic events have in leading someone to commit homicide when combined with biological, psychological and sociological predispositional factors (Choi & Lee, 2014).

2 Katie Daly: 300442625 Word Count: 2104 These factors could include genetic factors, low self-control, pre-existing physical or psychological disorders or conditions, economic status, or familial dysfunction (Durant, 2018). Hickey argues that individuals may experience a combination of any of the different factors, but the most influential is the experience of one or more traumatic events, usually during childhood or adolescence (Hickey, 1997, p. 87). Trauma may be related to “unstable home life, death of parents, divorce, corporal punishments, sexual abuse, and other negative events” (Hickey, 2002, p. 108). The trauma model posits that when combined with predispositional factors, trauma causes feelings of loss, humiliation, worthlessness, low self-esteem, and rejection, causing disassociation between the individual and the traumatic experience (Hickey, 1997, p. 87). The individual may develop “a veneer of self-confidence” (Hickey, 2002, p. 109) in an attempt to feel more in control, while they are actually losing “control of [their] inner self” (Hickey 2002, p. 116). However, this leads to an increase in feelings of hostility and aggression towards others and a desensitisation within the individual towards the feelings and experiences of others (Choi & Lee, 2014). The result of this loss of self-control and drastic increase in hostile feelings results in violent fantasies (Hickey, 1997). These fantasies usually involve “the sexual assault, torture, and degradation” of the victim. Facilitators like alcohol and drugs may be used to reduce inhibitions to embolden the individual to enact the fantasies in real life, resulting in violent or homicidal behaviour (Hickey, 1997, p. 89; Choi & Lee, 2014). This event then triggers the experience of trauma, or the victim does not react as expected and the fantasy is not perfectly acted out. This drives the offender to try again or may even cause the development of new fantasies, creating a cyclical model of repeated offending (Hickey, 1997, 2002). To consider how Hickey’s trauma control model can be applied to the life and offences of Gary Ridgway, this essay will analyse the three aspects of the model: potential trauma experienced by Ridgway, the development of hostile and aggressive feelings towards his victims, and the manifestation and enactment of violent sexual fantasies (Hickey, 2002). Firstly, we will focus on potentially traumatic events experienced by Ridgway during his childhood. The most obvious trauma that Ridgway experienced was the abusive treatment he suffered from his mother (Riviera, 2003). Mary and Thomas Ridgway had an argumentative and abusive relationship, which Gary and his brothers were openly exposed to growing up (Harden, 2003). Ridgway admitted to psychologists and investigators that his mother was extremely domineering and controlling, taking specific issue with Ridgway’s bed-wetting up until the age of 13 (Riviera, 2003). He confessed to having “vivid memories” of his mother hand-washing his genitals after every instance, and that he was both sexually attracted to her and “fantasized about killing her” (Harden, 2003). Professor Reid Meloy, at the University of California in San Diego, explains that this conduct would be “highly exciting and arousing, but it would also be humiliating”. Meloy hypothesises that Ridgway’s behaviour can be explained by “displaced matricide”, as each of his murders involved him “unconsciously… killing his mother over and over again” (Harden, 2003). This would directly contribute to the development of Ridgway’s hostile and aggressive feelings towards his victims, which were predominantly women and sex workers. These hostile feelings are the next aspect of the trauma control model that this essay will consider. Hickey argues that serial killers often suffer from extreme feelings of rejection and insufficiency, which contribute to a drastic increase in aggression and hostility. Investigators and psychologists who have met with Ridgway have affirmed that his abusive relationship with his mother would have been more than enough trauma to stir intense feelings of humiliation and rage in Ridgway as a child and adolescent (Riviera, 2003). Other than the abusive

3 Katie Daly: 300442625 Word Count: 2104 relationship Ridgway had with his mother, he grew up hearing complaints about sex workers from his father, and later had his own negative experiences with prostitutes when he contracted gonhorrea from sex workers while stationed in Vietnam (Harden, 2003). During this time, his first wife began having an extramarital affair. When Ridgway returned and discovered the affair, he referred to his wife as a “whore” before demanding a divorce (Harden, 2003). All of these experiences are highly likely to have contributed to the reinforcement of Ridgway’s growing hostile feelings towards women, initially triggered by his relationship with his mother. This was then continued with his second marriage, which also ended following infidelity (Riviera, 2003). It is likely that this reinforced the hostile and distrustful beliefs Ridgway held towards women, and increased his desire to dominate, control and degrade his female victims. Ridgway himself has “attribute[d] his multitudinous murders to his second wife”, Marcia Winslow (Harden, 2003). Winslow claimed that throughout their marriage, Ridgway became rougher with her, at one point putting her in a “chokehold” (McCarthy & Thornburgh, 2002). This demonstrates a clear pattern between negative experiences Ridgway has had with women and resulting hostile attitudes which spurred on increasingly violent behaviour.

Finally, we will consider this third pillar of the trauma control model, which emphasises the importance of violent sexual fantasies that may motivate the violent behaviour of the offender (Hickey, 1997). Along with Ridgway’s acknowledgement of his fantasies of killing his mother, he also “thought about stabbing her in the chest or in the heart” (Riviera, 2003) and said that he wanted to “cut her face and chest” (Harden, 2003). When he was 16, Ridgway stabbed a 6-year-old boy in the woods by his house, because he wanted “to see how stabbing worked” (Harden, 2003). This can be seen as a clear manifestation of the violent fantasies into offending behaviour, as posited by Hickey’s model. Ridgway fixated upon his hostile feelings which were likely caused by the loss of self-control he felt from the extreme humiliation and confusion his mother put him through. The sexual nature of their relationship contributed to the development of violent fantasies, which he eventually enacted onto an innocent victim (Riviera, 2003). Further, Ridgway selected his victims from sex workers and teenage runaways (McCarthy & Thornburgh, 2002). This was partly for convenience, as he correctly assumed that choosing victims from lower socio-economic groups would draw less attention to his crimes, but also because he had extremely negative views towards prostitutes and sex workers, as discussed earlier in this essay (Riviera, 2003; Keppel, Birnes & Rule, 2004). It is likely that this intense hostility contributed to Ridgway’s violent sexual fantasies as well his selection of victims. One limitation of Hickey’s trauma control model that needs to be considered is that it is based on a very broad definition of the term “serial murderer”. Hickey defines this concept as “all offenders who through premeditation killed three or more victims over a period of days, weeks, months or years…” This broad definition means that a vast number of offenders with diverse backgrounds, motives, and individual traits are grouped together under the one title which the model is then based on (Weatherby, Buller & McGinnis, 2009). Having such a wide research base means that it can be easy to fit every offender under this model, without actually identifying specific causal and contributory factors between offenders or their behaviours (Arrigo & Purcell, 2001; Choi & Lee, 2014). This broad approach was also used by Hickey in considering the nature of traumatic events which may trigger violent or homicidal behaviour. He considers that any traumatic event may cause homicidal behaviour, as long as they are perceived to be traumatic by the offender (Hickey, 1997, 2002). However, this is far too wide of an interpretation to consider, as Hickey himself acknowledges that almost every

4 Katie Daly: 300442625 Word Count: 2104 living individual in the world will experience some type of traumatic event in their lives, but clearly this does not always result in homicidal behaviour. Hickey claims that it is “the method in which they [the traumatic events] manifest themselves” which causes the behaviour, namely in the increase in hostile feelings, a loss of self-control and a fixation with violent fantasies (Hickey, 1997). However, there needs to be more research done to clarify exactly why some individuals manifest traumatic behaviour in this way, while others do not, in order for criminologists to effectively apply this model to real-life situations (Weatherby, Buller & McGinnis, 2009).

Hickey’s trauma control model can be applied with relative ease when considering the upbringing and adolescent experiences of Gary Ridgway in an attempt to understand what motivated his unprecedented career as America’s most prolific serial killer. While there are some limitations to this model, it is clear that it provides a strong basis for considering how traumatic events experienced by individuals in their childhood can ultimately lead to horrifying violence, when combined with certain external circumstances. However, the model needs to be developed to a more specific standard if there is hope for it to be used to predict or prevent a serial killer of Ridgway’s kind from being unleashed ever again. Reference List: Arrigo, B. A., Purcell. C. E. (2001). Explaining paraphilias and lust murder: toward an integrated model. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 45(6). DOI: 10.11770306624X01451002. Chan, H. C. (2012). “What propels sexual homicide offenders? Testing an integrated theory of social learning and routine activities theories”. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. University of South Florida, Scholar Commons. Choi, K., Lee, J.L. (2014). Assessment of the Extent and Prevalence of Serial Murder through Criminological Theories. Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 2(3). DOI: 10.13189/sa.2014.020307 Durant, R. (2018). An Introduction to Criminal Psychology. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Harden, B. (2003, November 16). The Banality of Gary: A Green River Chiller. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2003/11/16/the-banality-of-gary-a-green-riverchiller/2d9575c7-6843-4ec3-9517-72cd3ecdd9b0/?utm_term=.6e599ed4170f Hickey, E.W. (1997). Serial murderers and their victims (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Hickey, E. W. (2002). Serial murderers and their victims (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Keppel, R., Birnes, W. J., Rule, A. (2004). The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer. New York City, USA: Simon and Schuster. p.444. McCarthy, T., Thornburgh, n. (2002, June 3). River Of Death. Time Magazine. New York City: Meredith Corporation. McNerthney, C. (2018, November 20). Why the Green River Killer is no longer called an ‘offender’. WFTV Channel 9. https://www.wftv.com/news/why-gary-ridgway-will-no-longer-be-called-a-prisoninmate/647309597 Riviera, R. (2003, November 6). Ridgway went from having sex with prostitutes ‘to just plain killing ‘em’. The Seattle Times. http://old.seattletimes.com/html/greenriverkillings/2001784456_ridgway06m.html Tikkanen, A. (2016). Gary Ridgway. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online eds.). Retrieved https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gary-Ridgway accessed 23rd May. Weatherby, G. A., Buller, D. M., McGinnis, K. (2009). The Buller McGinnis Model of Serial Homicidal Behaviour: An Integrated Approach. Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice Research & Education, 3(1),...